


Bite your tongue till it tastes like blood

by ophellos



Series: Love is a Shadow [2]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: First Kiss, M/M, POV Castiel, Pining, Pre-Season/Series 06
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-14
Updated: 2017-04-14
Packaged: 2018-10-18 21:49:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,355
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10625808
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ophellos/pseuds/ophellos
Summary: Castiel has felt Dean’s heart like an ache in his own chest. It pulls towards him with every breath and Castiel can’t find a reason for it. Dean isn’t in danger—Castiel made sure of that—but his heart longs for Castiel like the earth longs for sunlight to touch its green pastures.





	

**Author's Note:**

> A direct sequel to A Day Is Long.
> 
> Title taken from Florence and the Machine's "Are You Hurting The One You Love?"

Castiel shouldn’t be here. Not when he has arrangements to make and important tasks to tend to and Dean is happy for the first time that Castiel has known him. Not when Castiel has to meet with Crowley afterwards like a cheating lover. Not when Sam Winchester walks the earth and Dean knows nothing about it. As Castiel appears, the rolling waves touch the sandy shores with a whisper and the moon sits reflective just above the water on the horizon. Castiel really should not be here, barging his way back into Dean’s life.

He just has to see, has to check.

Castiel has felt Dean’s heart like an ache in his own chest. It pulls towards him with every breath and Castiel can’t find a reason for it. Dean isn’t in danger—Castiel made sure of that—but his heart longs for Castiel like the earth longs for sunlight to touch its green pastures.

Every inch of Dean is green, lush and alive, even if Dean often feels opposite.

Stretched along the beach is a road and a car lingers on the shoulder, pulled over into the sand, its engine turned off. It’s not the Impala this time, but a beat up, wood-paneled van, the type that Dean once told him screams “I have six kids.”

Castiel steps around the car and when he rounds the bumper, he sees Dean sitting in the passenger seat, faced out towards the ocean, feet planted on the edge of the doorway, elbows braced on knees. He holds a lit cigarette between two fingers and he blinks up at Castiel as he taps the excess ash onto the ground.

“Figures you’d show up,” he grumbles and turns back to the water. “You real or are you part of this?” he asks, gesturing around with the cigarette,

“Does it matter?”

Dean lets out a breathy laugh that’s more scoff than chuckle. “Real Cas would say that,” he says. “Of course it matters.” He squints up at the top of Castiel’s head for a second and Castiel feels very silly as he glances his eyes up in confusion.

Dean’s laughter is genuine this time. “Figure if you’re a dream, maybe I can get you a cowboy hat,” he says. “No dice, so I guess you’re real.”

“You know that’s not how dreams work, Dean,” Castiel says but he doesn’t tell him that he’s right.

Dean makes a noncommittal noise and takes a slow drag from the cigarette, cherry red end glowing in the darkness.

“You dream of smoking?” Castiel asks, even though it’s not at all why he’s here.

Dean shrugs. “Had to quit when they started fucking up my lungs. Always missed it. Must be why you’re here too.”

“Because of the cigarettes?”

Dean stares up at Castiel. “Yeah, Cas, because of the cigarettes,” he says sarcastically. “My guardian angel here to save me from dream cancer.”

“And the beach?” Castiel asks and then smiles wryly. “The car?”

“Yeah, yuck it up,” Dean says, the side of his mouth turning up. He’s quiet for a moment and then when he speaks, his words are softer. “When we were kids, Sammy was obsessed with going to the beach. Always begging Dad. We never did go. I never took him.”

The grief seeps out from Dean and lays itself across Castiel’s shoulders. 

Dean laughs it off a second later. “The car though,” he says. “The car’s a fluke. Thing’s ugly as sin.”

They settle into silence and Castiel joins Dean at the car, leaning against it. Dean sighs after a second. “Why are you here, Cas?”

“You called out to me,” Castiel says. _With every atom of your existence, even the parts of you that hates you and hates me and hates us._ And he wants to tell Dean that he misses him, that he misses Sam too and he misses what they were. He wants to tell Dean that rebelling against heaven was the most right and wrong he’s ever been and he misses standing against the Host with Dean. It’s blasphemy, add it to the list of sins Castiel has been committing. Instead, he says, “Are you in danger?”

Dean laughs out loud at that and Castiel isn’t sure what he’s missing. “No,” he says finally. “No, I’m not in danger. Figures that you would hear that one.”

Castiel wants to tell him that he hears every prayer, even the ones that Dean doesn’t mean to send but he knows Dean now, knows that all it would do is scare him.

There is so much that Castiel wants to say to Dean, so many secrets and lies he wants to reveal; things he knows could both lift a weight off Dean’s shoulders or add a toll on his heart. Castiel is an angel but one of the human emotions he feels so starkly these days is selfishness. He wants to keep this place for just the two of them, wants to keep the ocean before Dean and him, wants to keep this family car under them and the moon above them, wants to keep this moment as it is, untouched by the lies Castiel has been weaving for a year. He wants to keep Dean’s smiles for himself.

Dean stands, reaching over to offer his cigarette to Castiel, who just shakes his head. “Yeah,” Dean says. “Probably best not to get the angel hooked on anything.” There’s a bitterness to his words, a bite that Castiel can’t place.

“How have you been, Dean?” Castiel asks and Dean laughs again, a private joke that Castiel isn’t privy to.

“God,” Dean says. “I’m in the most stable situation of my entire life and I’m still a mess. Maybe that’s all I’m meant to be—miserable and ungrateful.”

“No,” Castiel pushes off the car and stands in front of him. “No Dean, you’re—”

Except the rest of Castiel’s prepared speech, his pleading for Dean to see himself the way Castiel does, is cut off as Dean grabs him. He grips the lapels of Castiel’s trench coat and Castiel lets himself be tugged in, all too aware of the dueling waves of _needneedneed_ and _cantcantcant_ that Dean’s soul can’t contain. Dean moves his hand up into Castiel’s hair and then their chests are pressed together softly and Dean’s kissing him sweetly, desperately, barely. Dean melts back against the wood-paneled side of the van and sighs into Castiel’s mouth.

It lasts only a second. Castiel has existed for a millennia and lost track of the stars he’s seen die and a second is like a drop in the ocean and it’s the only time in his memory that he wishes he could experience time differently. Then, Dean is shoving him away with a hand to Castiel’s chest, staring at the ground that now stretches between them

“Fuck,” Dean curses, all evidence of the way he had relaxed into Castiel’s arms scrubbed away. “Fuck, I hope you’re a dream,” he whispers in a shaky voice and brings a hand to his mouth, rubbing the pads of his fingers across his lips before realizing what he’s doing and taking a puff from the still-lit cigarette between his fingers instead.

Castiel says nothing but there’s the familiar chaos of yearning and self-hatred that shades the air whenever he’s around Dean. The breeze sweeps by them, taking the smoke from Dean’s exhale and depositing it in Castiel’s face but it smells like Dean now. Castiel will greedily take what he can get. If he’s being selfish, he might as well not half-ass his sins.

The dream fades, beginning to drag Dean towards the surface of his consciousness. Too much is left unfinished and Castiel has so many things he needs to say, confessions and apologies and reassurances and an interrupted speech that too few people in Dean’s life have given him. But Dean looks so relieved to be rid of the situation that Castiel bites his tongue and makes himself instead memorize Dean’s face, remember him as he is in a rare quiet moment in his own mind, ocean behind them and the salty air in their lungs.


End file.
